[20] University library & publishing house synergy as a solution to the academic publishing puzzle

Abstract: The development of publishing activities by university libraries is a new competence that libraries successfully fulfill based on their knowledge, skills and experience. With the development in the past 10-15 years, libraries have gradually adopted many publishing/e-publishing activities, e.g. institutional repositories, publishing standards, persistent identifiers, Open Access publishing, etc. Some went on to provide journal publishing platform and became involved in publishing peer-reviewed content. Libraries have gradually mastered all pieces of the academic publishing puzzle: Document management background – electronic information resources management, experience and knowledge of new document types and formats incl. course and multimedia materials, metadata knowledge and skills, close communication with content providers. Methodological background – deep knowledge of scholarly communication, peer-review process, research assessment, citation metrics, and research output quality requirements at national and international levels also with regard to low-quality and questionable publications. Ethical background – information and publishing ethics related to the quality of research outputs (junk science, salami publication, plagiarism) Business and legal background – Open Access and new business models, related copyright issues. Technical background – online publishing tools, content management tools, repositories, various party persistent identifiers. With such a wide experience and know-how, a space for a close synergetic cooperation with the publishing house opens up. In summer 2016, the Czech Technical University in Prague brought up an idea to incorporate the publishing house into the university library. Following this decision, we started seeking an inspiration for the organizational and functional scheme for the new unit around the world. Such a cooperation saves duplicate work and significantly benefits both bodies, and at the end simplifies the services for the end users. There are three main possible models of such a cooperation mentioned in literature. (1) Publishing house and library can successfully coexist side-by-side and work in close cooperation as individual independent bodies; (2) Library, publishing house and other related bodies, e.g. IT/technical support, work closely together, being merged in one organizational unit. (3) In case that publishing house lacks capacities to adopt the necessary tools required for keeping up to date with the new trends in academic publishing/scholarly communication, publishing house can become a part of the library. There is some partial experience from a few institutions in the CZ with such a cooperation. To learn more, in fall 2016 we conducted an analysis of 25 European university libraries from 11 countries which were found to serve as a publishing house at their institution. The aim of the study was to find out practical aspects of the procedures and services that such a unit provides to the university. Such aspects were observed as e.g. document types published, forms and formats of electronic publishing, business models (Open Access publishing), proportion of peer-reviewed content published, authorship (internal vs. external authors), target audience, promotion, etc. The results showed that such bodies act as a full scale academic publishing houses publishing a wide variety of materials for various users. Further details will be presented at the poster